Keith at Laguna Beach -- 30June2012

Well, I found a cheap roller crate thingie, and successfully rigged up a battery powered amp with harmony box inside it, so I was obliged to take it down and try it out in Laguna.  My minimum set of stuff fits in there perfectly, with just enough room for the required bottle of Mountain Dew.

It worked out quite well, actually, with the wireless mic's receiver at the bottom of the crate with its antennas already extended, and everything pre-connected except for the harmony box, which has to be outside so I can step on its buttons.  I velcro-wrapped its four cables into a nice collected umbilical, so I just have to roll up to where I want to play, pop the top of the crate, unload the music stand and book, CDs, tip jar, standup sign, and harmony box, feed the umbilical out and plug in the 4 plugs, run the separate guitar cord out, turn on the amp and battery pack, put the top back on, and arrange the "merch" on it (further disguising its real purpose), strap on the guitar and wireless mic, and start playing.

Hmmm.  It may sound like a lot, but compared to the setup and teardown of my usual Real Gig rig, it's a dream.

It's tricky, though.  In a standard gig, I can assume that nobody can hear the acoustic sound of the guitar or my voice -- that all they hear is what's coming out of the speakers.  With this "close-proximity" sort of gig, people can hear me directly as much as I'm willing to crank the sound coming out of the amp.  So, they're hearing the guitar and the main vocal from two places (directly and the amp), but the harmony vocal created by the harmony box is only coming from the amp.  This make it really tricky to get a proper mix between the three components, and it took me quite a while to get something that I think was working well (though it's hard to tell since I'm so close to the sources of two of them).

And at first, it was kind of moot -- I got there at 4:45, when there were no other players out yet, so I got into Acoustic Alley, where I don't really need an amp at all (though I do like the enhancement of the harmony).  I set up without the amp at first, played a few songs to get comfortable, and then fired it all up.  But because it was a summer Saturday, there were a bunch of junior police(wo)men out directing traffic, and one of them seemed to think that right out in front of me was a good place to keep the cars moving down Forest Street.  She probably couldn't hear me at all most of the time (especially when the ubiquitous Harleys came by), nor was she probably at all interested in my amplifier transgression, but I'm still pretty paranoid about it, so I stashed the clandestine gear and played acoustic for a long time until she was gone.

The passers-by seemed pretty disinterested though, this time.I got only a few people to stop and listed for a while, but lots of people gave me a smile, and that's close enough to keep me playing.  By 8:00, I was starving, so I packed up and ate some trail mix as I rolled down to Greeter's Corner to see how Jim & Warren were doing.  They were just packing up, too, and another guy (Tom) was in the wings, playing already in anticipation of snagging the "main stage" there.

But it occurred to me that the main reason I had gone down there remained unfulfilled -- how would this new rig work out on a noisy, non-Alley, corner?  So I went down to the other end of Forest, and set up on the corner there, which has a pair of resting-place benches for people to hang out on.  It was getting late, so the traffic noise was abetting some, and a lot of the shops were closed so I was feeling less afraid of getting some shopkeeper mad enough to call the cops on me.  So I cranked it up a bit, and pulled in quite a few tips (for a new-record total of $41), and got some people to stop to hear a few out of the "on their way home" crowd (including a quite-drunk sing-along lady and her long lost friend, and the Russian couple who wanted to hear "Ho-tyel Cal-ee-for-nyah").  Apparently it *does* help to be actually audible.

By 10:15 though, the crowd had thinned and I decided that I needed to be closer to the action down at PCH.  But Tom was still going at it on the Corner, so I went on around, intending to go on home, but there was a little alcove off the sidewalk on the side of the art gallery, and since they were closed, I pulled up and sang a few more.  But even with the amp, the PCH traffic is pretty obnoxious, so I gave up at 10:45.

Besides, six hours of pretty continuous playing is a bit much, even for me.  Next time I'll try to show better judgment.  The new rig was quite a bit easier than my usual setup to drag back up the cliff, but I was still near-dead by the time I got back to my car.  I could try to find parking nearer to Forest Street next time, and take the $2 for the parking meter out of the tips, but it's the most exercise I get all week...